Olympic Watch: Hong Kong must remain free

Prague, June 30, 2004 – Olympic Watch has issued a statement today, calling on the Beijing government “to respect the wishes of Hong Kong citizens and to uphold its commitments from the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law”. The plea comes on the eve of the seventh anniversary of Hong Kong’s return under Chinese administration.

In the statement, Olympic Watch specifically reminds the Chinese government that “[t]he traditional operation of free media in Hong Kong must not be disturbed; their editors must not be threatened. Hong Kong citizens must, without delay, receive their universal suffrage for the election of the Chief Executive and of the whole legislature, as stipulated by the Basic Law”.

The United Kingdom returned Hong Kong under Chinese administration as a “Special Administrative Region” on July 1, 1997. Many of its citizens’ traditional freedoms, which were to be protected by the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1985 and Hong Kong’s Basic Law, have come under attack in recent years. Last summer, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets in protest and thus stopped legislative motion that was to develop Article 23 of the Basic Law into a tool for persecution. In recent months, several journalists have quit their jobs when their personal security had allegedly been threatened. Beijing has also refused to recognize universal suffrage for the 2007/2008 elections.

Olympic Watch (Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games in a Free and Democratic Country) was established in Prague in 2001. Its mission is to monitor the human rights situation in the People’s Republic of China in the run-up to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and to campaign to achieve improvements in the lives of the people of China.

The full text of the statement follows below.

Statement on the situation in Hong Kong

Seven years after Hong Kong’s return under Chinese administration, Olympic Watch calls on the government of the People’s Republic of China to respect the wishes of Hong Kong citizens and to uphold its commitments from the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law.

Olympic Watch is concerned to hear about the growing pressure by the communist authorities against the rights and liberties of the Hong Kong people, such their freedom of speech and freedom of association. The traditional operation of free media in Hong Kong must not be disturbed; their editors must not be threatened. Hong Kong citizens must, without delay, receive their universal suffrage for the election of the Chief Executive and of the whole legislature, as stipulated by the Basic Law.

We believe that the recent developments in Hong Kong clearly demonstrate that the human rights situation in China is not improving: The Beijing communist government continues to suppress the democratic wishes of the people in Hong Kong, and even more brutally in Mainland China.

Olympic Watch expresses its full support to the Hong Kong citizens’ just struggle for their rights. We believe that their determination will bring the strengthening of democracy in Hong Kong and that it will expose the emptiness of the Beijing government’s efforts to excuse its abhorrent human rights practices by alleged specific Chinese values. The people in Hong Kong and in other parts of China want their rights, which they naturally belong to them.

Therefore, we call on the government of the People’s Republic of China once again to carry out democratic reform and to guarantee human rights and liberties to the citizens of Hong Kong, as well as Mainland China, and thus to fulfill its promises of improvements by the 2008 Olympic Games.